Sorry, Grandma

Grandma with Auntie Jane at Grandma's house in Coburg.

Boxing Day at Grandma’s and nothing to do. At our place, we had a big yard and a beach nearby. If we were at the farm, we had stacks of acres to roam unsupervised. Grandma’s was in the city and her kids were our parents, all grown up and moved out. No Nintendos or Playstations, no DVD or VHS collections of horror movies, nothing new in the house that would interest any kid. 

And it wasn’t only the content of Grandma’s place that didn’t give kids much to do. It was Grandma, too.

Anywhere else, us cousins could run off on our own. The second we were all gathered at the farm or our place or Geordie and Shona’s (just down the road from Grandma’s but filled with videogames, movies and other shit to do), we’d disappear until the food was served, and then disappear again until it was time to go to bed or go home. 

Grandma, however, wanted us to sit quietly and join in on the conversation with the adults. She’d gone to all this trouble to put together a dignified afternoon and was it really too much trouble to sit for a couple of hours?

Even if we did manage to get away, we’d often have to pass back through the living area to get to the backyard, where she’d catch us dead in our tracks. 

Once, city cousin Geordie and I were on our way outside when she stopped us and insisted we ‘join the conversation’. We said we didn’t want to talk about what adults talked about, and Grandma asked us what it was that we thought adults talked about.

‘Politics,’ Geordie grumbled, and we both smirked. 

And I swear to God (sorry Grandma), not a few minutes after laughing about the absurdity of discussing politics, our parents and Grandma all started talking politics. Geordie and I suffered the appropriate window of time until it was deemed polite to leave. 

When it came to forcing civility on special occasions, Grandma had her ways. One trick was to split us up at the dinner table, kid/parent/kid. With rigid adherence to Grandma’s doctrine of table manners, there was no raising your voice to speak to the cousin two seats away. 

Grandma tried this technique when we all went to a fancy restaurant for her birthday. A Melbourne institution, the Flower Drum was usually booked months in advance and we had our own private room for a set menu. Grandma wasn’t going to let anything screw this up. 

A couple of hours in, the seating formation was briefly broken up and us cousins were clumped together, sharing Richard Cheese parody songs on our iRivers. Grandma was harping on us for our abysmal table manners—we knew we’d be back in the approved formation soon. 

During these outings or stays at Grandma’s under strict supervision, farm cousin George and I had a penchant for devising an escalating series of dares. One such notable dare was undertaken that day at the Flower Drum. 

Taking excessive trips to the bathroom so we could hang out, somehow the idea got into our heads that one of us should start urinating in the little white trash bin between the stalls. George, being the braver of us two, was often easier to convince, so I dared him to do it.

George got a few seconds into his forbidden whizz before an unwitting guest of the prestigious Flower Drum entered through the bathroom door. 

We panicked, George zipped up and ran into the stall nearest. Inexplicably I crashed in after him. 

‘Get out of here, what the hell are you doing!’ George hissed at me. 

I stumbled out into the stall across from his and we both tried to stifle our laughs. It was such a prodigious laugh I can still remember the agonising sensation of having to hold it in. 

‘I know you guys might think it’s funny, but it’s really not,’ came the voice of the ambushed Flower Drum patron. 

This really made us lose it. It stands as my most memorable experience of Grandma’s birthday at the Flower Drum. 

Sorry, Grandma. 

George and I had our regular dares at Grandma’s place, too. 

She lived in Coburg and it didn’t have a reputation for being the safest suburb in Melbourne. Her house was broken into twice, once when she’d been sitting up in bed watching TV. 

The man came into her room slowly, stood in the doorway and took something off her dresser, covering his face with it. Grandma screamed so loudly that the neighbour, who knew she was an elderly woman, grabbed a cricket bat and leapt over the fence. But the man with the covered face had already fled.

To break free of Grandma’s polite stranglehold on the Boxing Day activities, George and I would take walks around the block. Sometimes we’d ask if we could go, they’d tell us yes, and we’d go. Other times they’d tell us no, and we’d still go. Rejections to our proposals were more likely the later into the evening it got, so naturally that’s when the dares would start. We’d circle the block once, about a 10 minute walk, and when we saw no one in the front yard or windows waiting for us to return, we’d know we’d gotten away with it. 

‘One more?’ George would grin at me with that huge, toothy smile.

‘All right. One more.’ I’d relent, but I was nervous we’d see Alex waiting for us when we got back. Alex is George’s Dad and he scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Think of Michael Shannon with his arms crossed, waiting for you in the front yard as you return from a jaunt which he explicitly told you you could not embark on, and you’ll get the idea. 

Our second go-around we’d walk slower. It would be getting darker, a little colder, and closer to things wrapping up back home. The streets around Grandma’s place would be sheathed in a blue tint. The higher the risk, the slower we walked. 

Grandma’s favourite colour was mauve. She wore muted purples and blues that matched the sombre interior of her home. Her accent you could characterise as ‘refined Australian’. She rounded out the nasally flat vowels and pronounced her words with a dignified air. 

Once, I was part of a show in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, which Grandma came along to see.  

We had to restrict the seating to the second row back, because the show involved bits of scrap metal being thrown around the stage, often hitting the front row seats. 

I watched from my seated position on the stage as Grandma walked in and sat right down in the front row. She’d somehow snuck past Jack, our burly friend ushering the crowds further up. 

‘Sorry, Ma’am, we’re actually not having anyone sit in the front row, it’s a safety hazard.’ 

‘Yes but I would like to sit here,’ Grandma emphasised. She was placing her purple handbag down and resting her cane next to her while everyone else was walking further up the aisles. 

‘Of course, I can see that, but we do need everyone to sit at least one row further up for this show.’ Jack, a tall, tattooed and pierced pastry chef, was hitting the right note of stern politeness.

But Grandma was persistent. ‘Well I don’t see what’s going to happen if I sit here.’

I watched this unfold from my spot on the stage, glad to be shrouded in darkness.

‘I’d be happy to help you up. I can take your bag and you can take my arm and we’ll just walk up a couple of rows, is that your family up there?’ Jack gestured upward to more members of my family who’d also come to see the show.

‘I really would prefer to remain where I’ve sat,’ Grandma said. 

After persistence from Mum and cousins and siblings, Grandma begrudgingly moved up a few rows. 

Sorry, Grandma. 

On another dull day at Grandma’s, George and I were kicking around in the garage when we happened upon a six pack of beer in the fridge. 

George was grinning before he spoke. ‘Dare you to open one.’

‘You go,’ I said, hoping this was one of those times he secretly wanted to do the dare himself.

He shook his head. ‘I dared you.’

I broke the beer from its cardboard packaging and didn’t do it right away. I carried it around, putting it down and picking it up, going to see what our brothers were doing in the backyard—looking for reasons not to go through with it. But George was always by my side, waiting. The dare had to be done.

George stared at the beer with eyes lit up and hands clasped like a devilish tempter.

I twisted the top. 

Shaken up from my nervous handling, the beer fizzed and foam spit out the sides, spilling over my clothes and on the concrete floor. I leapt back and looked up at George, each of us making a big O of surprise. 

Glancing past George, through the garage door, through the back garden window, was Alex, staring with his intense, round eyes, face set stern, right at me and my half opened beer. His Michael Shannon stare de-fizzed the beer and all came to a standstill.  

Grandma died in that home, surrounded by Mum and her siblings.

Before leaving the hospital, they discussed taking her home. The treatments weren’t working and it was assumed she’d want to die at home. 

Grandma was indignant. She might have been scared but she kept up appearances and acted as if we were asking her to move back a few rows at a theatre show. A devout Christian, she requested a priest from her local church.

‘They told me I’m going to die,’ she said in a huff to the priest. 

‘Well, that’s okay,’ he said. He managed to ease her into the idea that none of us could, and Grandma was taken home. 

I’m pretty sure that’s what I was thinking when I saw Alex’s stern gaze through the window at me and my open beer: I’m going to die. I turned to George but he’d disappeared out of the garage. Bastard.

Overcome with panic for my safety and wellbeing, I did what I always do: burst into tears. I put the beer down and walked out into the yard, hoping someone might swoop in and solve my problem. 

Elliot came over to see what the commotion was. ‘Come on, Tom. He led me back into the garage. Streaks of spilled beer stained the concrete. The item of transgression sat on top of the fridge. 

I started blubbering out my explanation, but Elliot had it figured. 

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take this,’ he grabbed the beer. 

‘But– but. Alex saw—’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Elliot said. ‘We’re gonna go out here.’ He opened the back door which led into the cobblestone lane we used to call ‘Guppa’s Lane’ when my brother couldn’t pronounce ‘Grandpa’. I used to think  it was because ‘Guppa’ was the sound our shoes made walking on the cobblestones. 

We Guppa’d a couple houses down and Elliot threw the beer over to his right. It sailed over the neighbour’s fence and landed in their backyard. ‘It’s their problem now,’ he said with a smile.

Evidence destroyed, I felt the dread of consequence lift. We walked back to Grandma’s place. 

Sorry, Grandma.

It was a full house during Grandma’s last days. Her weary children worked together, tending to her needs as she declined, staying overnight, cooking together, bickering, laughing. 

When I came over to visit, the house felt darker than usual, as if it too were dying, an organic extension of its owner. Mum asked if I wanted to go in and see Grandma while she slept. 

When I’d arrived, I’d glanced into Grandma’s room as I walked past. Her body was a protruding mound on the bed, her breaths deep and rattling, monitors hooked up alongside. 

I shook my head. It didn’t make sense not to see Grandma sitting up and having a glass of McGuigan’s, requesting I sit by her side and devote some time before running off to play.

At her funeral, us cousins told stories of our indignant Grandmother. Gabriel talked about Grandma’s characteristic teardown of the movie they’d seen together at the Nova Cinema. Shona told the story of a car mishap and a very vocal Grandma in the backseat. And I recalled my excitement at telling Grandma what I was studying in my senior year literature class, only to have her retort, ‘What on earth are they teaching you that for?’ 

Sorry, Grandma.